Key Points:
Australian corporate and individual taxpayers should be
scrutinising their own offshore affairs and be able to effectively
respond to regulatory scrutiny through strategic and measured
means.
The 2.6 terabyte leaking of information from the law firm,
Mossack Fonseca, in Panama (known as the Panama Papers) could be a
significant issue for hundreds of Australian tax payers who may
directly or indirectly have interests in offshore structures set up
by the firm. These could include entities and trusts that the
Panama law firm was instrumental in setting up in the British
Virgin Islands (BVI), Panama, Seychelles, the Bahamas and Samoa.
While the use of offshore structures in jurisdictions with high
financial secrecy is in many circumstances legitimate they are
susceptible to abuse by corrupt individuals or entities.
